Текст книги "A Place Called Freedom"

Автор книги: Ken Follett

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“The Virginians are worse,” said Drome. “The tobacco planters never pay their debts.”

“Don’t I know it,” said Sir George. “I’ve just had a planter default—leaving me with a bankrupt plantation on my hands. A place called Mockjack Hall.”

Robert said: “Thank God there’s no import duty on convicts.”

There was a general murmur of agreement. The most profitable part of the Jamisson shipping business was transporting convicted criminals to America. Every year the courts sentenced several hundred people to transportation—it was an alternative to hanging as punishment for crimes such as stealing—and the government paid five pounds per head to the shipper. Nine out of ten transportees crossed the Atlantic on a Jamisson vessel. But the government payment was not the only way money was made. On the other side the convicts were obliged to do seven years’ unpaid labor, which meant they could be sold as seven-year slaves. Men fetched ten to fifteen pounds, women eight or nine, children less. With 130 or 140 convicts packed into the hold shoulder to shoulder like fish in a basket, Robert could show a profit of two thousand pounds—the purchase price of the ship—in a single voyage. It was a lucrative trade.

“Aye,” said Father, and he drained his goblet. “But even that would stop if the colonists had their way.”

The colonists complained about it constantly. Although they continued to buy the convicts—such was the shortage of cheap labor out there—they resented the mother country dumping its riffraff on them, and blamed the convicts for increasing crime.

“At least the coal mines are reliable,” Sir George said. “They’re the only thing we can count on these days. That’s why McAsh has to be crushed.”

Everyone had opinions about McAsh, and several different conversations broke out at once. Sir George seemed to have had enough of the subject, however. He turned to Robert. Adopting a jocular tone he said: “What about the Hallim girl, then, eh? A little jewel, if you ask me.”

“Elizabeth is very spirited,” Robert said dubiously.

“That’s true,” Father said with a laugh. “I remember when we shot the last wolf in this part of Scotland, eight or ten years ago, and she insisted on raising the cubs herself. She used to walk around with two little wolves on a leash. You’ve never seen anything like it in your life! The gamekeepers were outraged, said the cubs would escape and become a menace—but they died, fortunately.”

“She may make a troublesome wife,” Robert said.

“Nothing like a mettlesome mare,” Sir George said. “Besides, a husband always has the upper hand, no matter what. You could do a lot worse.” He lowered his voice. “Lady Hallim holds the estate in trust until Elizabeth marries. Since a woman’s property belongs to her husband, the whole place will become her bridegroom’s on her wedding day.”

“I know,” Robert said.

Jay had not known, but he was not surprised: few men would be happy to bequeath a sizable estate to a woman.

Sir George went on: “There must be a million tons of coal under High Glen—all the seams run in that direction. The girl is sitting on a fortune, pardon the vulgarity.” He chortled.

Robert was characteristically dour. “I’m not sure how much she likes me.”

“What is there to dislike? You’re young, you’re going to be rich, and when I die you’ll be a baronet—what more could a girl want?”

“Romance?” Robert answered. He pronounced the word with distaste, as if it were an unfamiliar coin offered by a foreign merchant.

“Miss Hallim can’t afford romance.”

“I don’t know,” Robert said. “Lady Hallim has been living in debt since I can remember. Why should she not go on like that forever?”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Sir George said. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was not overheard. “You know she has mortgaged the entire estate?”

“Everyone knows that.”

“I happen to know that her creditor is not willing to renew.”

Robert said: “But surely she could raise the money from another lender, and pay him off.”

“Probably,” Sir George said. “But she doesn’t know it. And her financial adviser won’t tell her—I’ve made sure of that.”

Jay wondered what bribe or threat his father had used to suborn Lady Hallim’s adviser.

Sir George chuckled. “So, you see, Robert, young Elizabeth can’t afford to turn you down.”

At that moment Henry Drome broke away from his conversation and came over to the three Jamisson men. “Before we go in to dinner, George, there’s something I have to ask you. I may speak freely in front of your sons, I know.”

“Of course.”

“The American troubles have hit me quite hard—planters who can’t pay their debts, and so on—and I fear I can’t meet my obligations to you this quarter.”

Sir George had obviously loaned money to Henry. Normally Father was brutally practical with debtors: they paid, or they went to jail. Now, however, he said: “I understand, Henry. Times are hard. Pay me when you can.”

Jay’s jaw dropped, but a moment later he realized why his father was being so soft. Drome was a relative of Robert’s mother, Olive, and Father was being easy on Henry for her sake. Jay was so disgusted he walked away.

The ladies came back. Jay’s mother wore a suppressed smile, as if she had an amusing secret. Before he could ask her what it was another guest arrived, a stranger in clerical gray. Alicia spoke to the man then took him to Sir George. “This is Mr. Cheshire,” she said. “He’s come in place of the pastor.”

The newcomer was a pockmarked young man with spectacles and an old-fashioned curly wig. Although Sir George and the older men still wore wigs, younger men did so rarely, and Jay never did. “Reverend Mr. York sends his apologies,” said Mr. Cheshire.

“Not at all, not at all,” said Sir George, turning away: he was not interested in obscure young clergymen.

They went in to dinner. The smell of food mingled with a damp odor that came from the heavy old curtains. The long table was laid with an elaborate spread: joints of venison, beef, and ham; a whole roast salmon; and several different pies. But Jay could hardly eat. Would Father give him the Barbados property? If not, what else? It was hard to sit still and eat venison when your entire future was about to be decided.

In some ways he hardly knew his father. Although they lived together, at the family house in Grosvenor Square, Sir George was always at the warehouse with Robert. Jay spent the day with his regiment. They sometimes met briefly at breakfast, and occasionally at supper—but Sir George often ate supper in his study while looking over some papers. Jay could not guess what his father would do. So he toyed with his food and waited.

Mr. Cheshire proved mildly embarrassing. He belched loudly two or three times and spilled his claret, and Jay noticed him staring rather obviously into the cleavage of the woman sitting next to him.

They had sat down at three o’clock and, by the time the ladies withdrew, the winter afternoon was darkening into evening. As soon as they had gone Sir George shifted on his seat and farted volcanically. “That’s better,” he said.

A servant brought a bottle of port, a drum of tobacco and a box of clay pipes. The young clergyman filled a pipe and said: “Lady Jamisson’s a damn fine woman, Sir George, if I may say so. Damn fine.”

He seemed drunk, but even so such a remark could not be allowed to pass. Jay came to his mother’s defense. “I’ll thank you to say no more about Lady Jamisson, sir,” he said frostily.

The clergyman put a taper to his pipe, inhaled, and began to cough. He had obviously never smoked before. Tears came to his eyes, and he gasped and spluttered and coughed again. The coughs shook him so hard that his wig and spectacles fell off—and Jay saw immediately that this was no clergyman.

He began to laugh. The others looked at him curiously. They had not seen it yet. “Look!” he said. “Don’t you see who it is?”

Robert was the first to realize. “Good God, it’s Miss Hallim in disguise!” he said.

There was a moment of startled silence. Then Sir George began to laugh. The other men, seeing that he was going to take it as a joke, laughed too.

Lizzie took a drink of water and coughed some more. As she recovered, Jay admired her costume. The spectacles had hidden her flashing dark eyes, and the side-curls of the wig had partly obscured her pretty profile. A white linen stock thickened her neck and covered the smooth feminine skin of her throat. She had used charcoal or something to give her cheeks the pockmarked look, and she had drawn a few wispy hairs on her chin like the beard of a young man who did not yet shave every day. In the gloomy rooms of the castle, on a dull winter’s afternoon in Scotland, no one had seen through her disguise.

“Well, you’ve proved you can pass for a man,” said Sir George when she had stopped coughing. “But you still can’t go down the pit. Go and fetch the other ladies, and we’ll give Jay his birthday present.”

For a few minutes Jay had forgotten his anxiety, but now it came back with a thump.

They met up with the women in the hall. Jay’s mother and Lizzie were laughing fit to bust: Alicia had obviously been in on the plot, which accounted for her secretive grin before dinner. Lizzie’s mother had not known about it, and she was looking frosty.

Sir George led the way out through the main doors. It was dusk. The snow had stopped. “Here,” said Sir George. “This is your birthday present.”

In front of the house a groom held the most beautiful horse Jay had ever seen. It was a white stallion about two years old, with the lean lines of an Arab. The crowd made it nervous, and it skipped sideways, forcing the groom to tug on its bridle to keep it still. There was a wild look in its eyes, and Jay knew instantly it would go like the wind.

He was lost in admiration, but his mother’s voice cut through his thoughts like a knife. “Is that all?” she said.

Father said: “Now, Alicia, I hope you aren’t going to be ungracious—”

“Is that all?” she repeated, and Jay saw that her face was twisted into a mask of rage.

“Yes,” he admitted.

It had not occurred to Jay that this present was being given to him instead of the Barbados property. He stared at his parents as the news sank in. He felt so bitter that he could not speak.

His mother spoke for him. He had never seen her so angry. “This is your son!” she said, her voice shrill with fury. “He is twenty-one years old—he’s entitled to his portion in life … and you give him a horse?”

The guests looked on, fascinated but horrified.

Sir George reddened. “Nobody gave me anything when I was twenty-one!” he said angrily. “I never inherited so much as a pair of shoes—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said contemptuously. “We’ve all heard how your father died when you were fourteen and you worked in a mill to keep your sisters—that’s no reason to inflict poverty on your own son, is it?”

“Poverty?” He spread his hands to indicate the castle, the estate, and the life that went with it. “What poverty?”

“He needs his independence—for God’s sake give him the Barbados property.”

Robert protested: “That’s mine!”

Jay’s jaw became unlocked, and at last he found his voice. “The plantation has never been properly administered,” he said. “I thought I would run it more like a regiment, get the niggers working harder and so on, and make it more remunerative.”

“Do you really think you could do that?” said his father.

Jay’s heart leaped: perhaps Father would change his mind. “I do!” he said eagerly.

“Well, I don’t,” Father said harshly.

Jay felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.

“I don’t believe you have an inkling how to run a plantation or any other enterprise,” Sir George grated. “I think you’re better off in the army where you’re told what to do.”

Jay was stunned. He looked at the beautiful white stallion. “I’ll never ride that horse,” he said. “Take it away.”

Alicia spoke to Sir George. “Robert’s getting the castle and the coal mines and the ships and everything else—does he have to have the plantation too?”

“He’s the elder son.”

“Jay is younger, but he’s not nothing. Why does Robert have to get everything?”

“For the sake of his mother,” Sir George said.

Alicia stared at Sir George, and Jay realized that she hated him. And I do too, he thought. I hate my father.

“Damn you, then,” she said, to shocked gasps from the guests. “Damn you to hell.” And she turned around and went back into the house.

5

THE MCASH TWINS LIVED IN A ONE-ROOM HOUSE FIFTEEN feet square, with a fireplace on one side and two curtained alcoves for beds on the other. The front door opened onto a muddy track that ran downhill from the pit to the bottom of the glen where it met the road that led to the church, the castle and the outside world. The water supply was a mountain stream at the back of the row of houses.

All the way home Mack had been agonizing over what had happened in the church, but he said nothing, and Esther tactfully asked him no questions. Earlier that morning, before leaving for church, they had put a piece of bacon on the fire to boil, and when they returned home the smell of it filled the house and made Mack’s mouth water, lifting his spirits. Esther shredded a cabbage into the pot while Mack went across the road to Mrs. Wheighel’s for a jug of ale. The two of them ate with the gargantuan appetites of physical laborers. When the food and the beer were gone, Esther belched and said: “Well, what will you do?”

Mack sighed. Now that the question had been posed directly, he knew there was only one answer. “I’ve got to go away. I can’t stay here, after all that. My pride won’t let me. I’d be a constant reminder, to every young man in the glen, that the Jamissons cannot be defied. I must leave.” He was trying to remain calm, but his voice was shaky with emotion.

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Tears came to Esther’s eyes. “You’re pitting yourself against the most powerful people in the land.”

“I’m right, though.”

“Aye. But right and wrong don’t count much in this world—only in the next.”

“If I don’t do it now, I never will—and I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting it.”

She nodded sadly. “That’s for sure. But what if they try to stop you?”

“How?”

“They could post a guard on the bridge.”

The only other way out of the glen was across the mountains, and that was too slow: the Jamissons could be waiting on the other side by the time Mack got there. “If they block the bridge, I’ll swim the river,” he said.

“The water’s cold enough to kill you at this time of year.”

“The river’s about thirty yards wide. I reckon I can swim across in a minute or so.”

“If they catch you they’ll bring you back with an iron collar around your neck, like Jimmy Lee.”

Mack winced. To wear a collar like a dog was a humiliation the miners all feared. “I’m cleverer than Jimmy,” he said. “He ran out of money and tried to get work at a pit in Clackmannan, and the mine owner reported his name.”

“That’s the trouble. You’ve got to eat, and how will you earn your bread? Coal is all you know.”

Mack had a little cash put aside but it would not last long. However, he had thought about this. “I’ll go to Edinburgh,” he said. He might get a ride on one of the heavy horse-drawn wagons that took the coal from the pithead—but he would be safer to walk. “Then I’ll get on a ship—I hear they always want strong young men to work on the coalers. In three days I’ll be out of Scotland. And they can’t bring you back from outside the country—the laws don’t run elsewhere.”

“A ship,” Esther said wonderingly. Neither of them had ever seen one, although they had looked at pictures in books. “Where will you go?”

“London, I expect.” Most coal ships out of Edinburgh were destined for London. But some went to Amsterdam, Mack had been told. “Or Holland. Or Massachusetts, even.”

“They’re just names,” Esther said. “We’ve never met anyone who’s been to Massachusetts.”

“I suppose people eat bread and live in houses and go to sleep at night, the same as everywhere else.”

“I suppose so,” she said dubiously.

“Anyway, I don’t care,” he said. “I’ll go anywhere that’s not Scotland—anywhere a man can be free. Think of it: to live where you like, not where you’re told. To choose your work, free to leave your place and take another job that’s better paid, or safer, or cleaner. To be your own man, and nobody’s slave—won’t that be grand?”

There were hot tears on her cheeks. “When will you go?”

“I’ll stay another day or two, and hope the Jamissons relax their vigilance a bit. But Tuesday’s my twenty-second birthday. If I’m at the pit on Wednesday I’ll have worked my year-and-a-day, and I’ll be a slave again.”

“You’re a slave anyway, in reality, whatever that letter said.”

“But I like the thought that I’ve got the law on my side. I don’t know why it should be important, but it is. It makes the Jamissons the criminals, whether they acknowledge it or not. So I’ll be away Tuesday night.”

In a small voice she said: “What about me?”

“You’d better work for Jimmy Lee, he’s a good hewer and he’s desperate for another bearer. And Annie—”

Esther interrupted him. “I want to go with you.”

He was surprised. “You’ve never said anything about it!”

Her voice became louder. “Why do you think I’ve never married? Because if I get wed and have a child I’ll never get out of here.”

It was true she was the oldest single woman in Heugh. But Mack had assumed there was just no one good enough for her here. It had not occurred to him that all these years she had secretly wanted to escape. “I never knew!”

“I was afraid. I still am. But if you’re going, I’ll go with you.”

He saw the desperation in her eyes, and it hurt him to refuse her, but he had to. “Women can’t be sailors. We haven’t the money for your passage, and they wouldn’t let you work it. I’d have to leave you in Edinburgh.”

“I won’t stay here if you go!”

Mack loved his sister. They had always sided with one another in any conflict, from childhood scraps, through rows with their parents, to disputes with the pit management. Even when she had doubts about his wisdom she was as fierce as a lioness in his defense. He longed to take her with him, but it would be much harder for two to escape than one. “Stay a little while, Esther,” he said. “When I get where I’m going, I’ll write to you. As soon as I get work, I’ll save money and send for you.”

“Will you?”

“Aye, to be sure!”

“Spit and swear.”

“Spit and swear?” It was something they had done as children, to seal a promise.

“I want you to!”

He could see she meant it. He spat on his palm, reached across the plank table, and took her hard hand in his own. “I swear I’ll send for you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

6

A DEER HUNT HAD BEEN PLANNED FOR THE FOLLOWING morning, and Jay decided to go along. He felt like killing something.

He ate no breakfast but filled his pocket with whiskey butties, little balls of oatmeal steeped in whiskey, then stepped outside to look at the weather. It was just becoming light. The sky was gray but the cloud level was high, and there was no rain: they would be able to see to shoot.

He sat on the steps at the front of the castle and fitted a new wedge-shaped flint into the firing mechanism of his gun, fixing it firmly with a wad of soft leather. Perhaps slaughtering some stags would be an outlet for his rage, but he wished he could kill his brother Robert instead.

He was proud of his gun. A muzzle-loading flintlock rifle, it was made by Griffin of Bond Street and had a Spanish barrel with silver inlay. It was far superior to the crude “Brown Bess” issued to his men. He cocked the flintlock and aimed at a tree across the lawn. Sighting along the barrel, he imagined he saw a big stag with spreading antlers. He drew a bead on the chest just behind the shoulder, where the beast’s big heart pumped. Then he changed the image and saw Robert in his sights: dour, dogged Robert, greedy and tireless, with his dark hair and well-fed face. Jay pulled the trigger. The flint struck steel and gave a satisfactory shower of sparks, but there was no gunpowder in the pan and no ball in the barrel.

He loaded his gun with steady hands. Using the measuring device in the nozzle of his gunpowder flask he poured exactly two and a half drams of black powder into the barrel. He took a ball from his pocket, wrapped it in a scrap of linen cloth, and pushed it into the barrel. Then he undipped the ramrod from its housing under the barrel and used it to ram the ball into the gun as far as it would go. The ball was half an inch in diameter. It could kill a full-grown stag at a range of a hundred yards: it would smash Robert’s ribs, tear through his lung, and rip open the muscle of his heart, killing him in seconds.

He heard his mother say: “Hello, Jay.”

He stood up and kissed her good morning. He had not seen her since last night, when she had damned his father and stormed off. Now she looked weary and sad. “You slept badly, didn’t you,” he said sympathetically.

She nodded. “I’ve had better nights.”

“Poor Mother.”

“I shouldn’t have cursed your father like that.”

Hesitantly Jay said: “You must have loved him … once.”

She sighed. “I don’t know. He was handsome and rich and a baronet, and I wanted to be his wife.”

“But now you hate him.”

“Ever since he began to favor your brother over you.”

Jay felt angry. “You’d think Robert would see the unfairness of it!”

“I’m sure he does, in his heart. But I’m afraid Robert is a very greedy young man. He wants it all.”

“He always did.” Jay was recalling Robert as a child, never happier than when he had grabbed Jay’s share of the toy soldiers or the plum pudding. “Remember Robert’s pony, Rob Roy?”

“Yes, why?”

“He was thirteen, and I was eight, when he got that pony. I longed for a pony—and I could ride better than he, even then. But he never once let me ride it. If he didn’t want to ride it himself, he would make a groom exercise Rob Roy while I watched, rather than let me have a go.”

“But you rode the other horses.”

“By the time I was ten I had ridden everything else in the stable, including Father’s hunters. But not Rob Roy.”

“Let’s take a turn up and down the drive.” She was wearing a fur-lined coat with a hood, and Jay had his plaid cloak. They walked across the lawn, their feet crunching the frosted grass.

“What made my father like this?” Jay said. “Why does he hate me?”

She touched his cheek. “He doesn’t hate you,” she said, “although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.”

“Then why does he treat me so badly?”

“Your father was a poor man when he married Olive Drome. He had nothing but a corner shop in a low-class district of Edinburgh. This place, that is now called Castle Jamisson, was owned by a distant cousin of Olive’s, William Drome. William was a bachelor who lived alone, and when he fell ill Olive came here to look after him. He was so grateful that he changed his will, leaving everything to Olive; and then, despite her nursing, he died.”

Jay nodded. “I’ve heard that story more than once.”

“The point is that your father feels this estate really belongs to Olive. And this estate is the foundation on which the whole of his business empire has been built. What’s more, mining is still the most profitable of his enterprises.”

“It’s steady, he says,” Jay put in, remembering yesterday’s conversation. “Shipping is volatile and risky, but the coal just goes on and on.”

“Anyway, your father feels he owes everything to Olive, and that it would be some kind of insult to her memory if he gave anything to you.”

Jay shook his head. “There must be more to it than that. I feel we don’t have the whole story.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I’ve told you all I know.”

They reached the end of the drive and walked back in silence. Jay wondered whether his parents ever spent nights together. His guess was that they probably did. His father would feel that whether she loved him or not she was his wife, and therefore he was entitled to use her for relief. It was an unpleasant thought.

When they reached the castle entrance she said: “I’ve spent all night trying to think of a way to make things right for you, and so far I haven’t succeeded. But don’t despair. Something will come up.”

Jay had always relied on his mother’s strength. She could stand up to his father, make him do what she wanted. She had even persuaded Father to pay Jay’s gambling debts. But this time Jay feared she might fail. “Father has decided that I shall get nothing. He must have known how it would make me feel. Yet he made the decision anyway. There’s no point in pleading with him.”

“I wasn’t thinking of pleading,” she said dryly.

“What, then?”

“I don’t know, but I haven’t given up. Good morning, Miss Hallim.”

Lizzie was coming down the steps at the front of the castle, dressed for hunting, looking like a pretty pixie in a black fur cap and little leather boots. She smiled and seemed happy to see him. “Good morning!”

The sight of her cheered Jay up. “Are you coming out with us?” he inquired.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

It was unusual, though perfectly acceptable, for women to go hunting, and Jay, knowing Lizzie as he did, was not surprised that she planned to go out with the men. “Splendid!” he said. “You’ll add a rare touch of refinement and style to what might otherwise be a coarsely masculine expedition.”

“Don’t bet on it,” she said.

Mother said: “I’m going in. Good hunting, both of you.”

When she had gone Lizzie said: “I’m so sorry your birthday was spoiled.” She squeezed his arm sympathetically. “Perhaps you’ll forget your troubles for an hour or so this morning.”

He could not help smiling back. “I’ll do my best.”

She sniffed the air like a vixen. “A good strong southwest wind,” she said. “Just right.”

It was five years since Jay had last hunted red deer, but he remembered the lore. Hunters disliked a still day, when a sudden capricious breeze could blow the scent of men across the mountainside and send the deer running.

A gamekeeper walked around the corner of the castle with two dogs on a leash, and Lizzie went to pet them. Jay followed her, feeling cheered up. Glancing back, he saw his mother at the castle door, looking hard at Lizzie with an odd, speculative expression.

The dogs were the long-legged, gray-haired breed sometimes called Highland deerhounds and sometimes Irish wolfhounds. Lizzie crouched down and spoke to each of them in turn. “Is this Bran?” she asked the keeper.

“The son of Bran, Miss Elizabeth,” he said. “Bran died a year ago. This one’s Busker.”

The dogs would be kept well to the rear of the hunt and released only after shots had been fired. Their role was to chase and bring down any deer wounded but not felled by the hunter’s fire.

The rest of the party emerged from the castle: Robert, Sir George, and Henry. Jay stared at his brother, but Robert avoided his eye. Father nodded curtly, almost as if he had forgotten the events of last night.

On the east side of the castle the keepers had set up a target, a crude dummy deer made of wood and canvas. Each of the hunters would fire a few rounds at it to get his eye in. Jay wondered whether Lizzie could shoot. A lot of men said women could not shoot properly because their arms were too weak to hold the heavy gun, or because they lacked the killer instinct, or for some other reason. It would be interesting to see if it was true.

First they all shot from fifty yards. Lizzie went first and made a perfect hit, her shot striking the target in the killing spot just behind the shoulder. Jay and Sir George did the same. Robert and Henry struck farther back along the body, wounding shots that might allow the beast to get away and die slowly and painfully.

They shot again from seventy-five yards. Surprisingly, Lizzie hit perfectly again. So did Jay. Sir George hit the head and Henry the rump. Robert missed altogether, his ball striking sparks off the stone wall of the kitchen garden.

Finally they tried from a hundred yards, the outside limit for their weapons. To everyone’s astonishment Lizzie scored another perfect hit. Robert, Sir George and Henry missed altogether. Jay, shooting last, was determined not to be beaten by a girl. He took his time, breathing evenly and sighting carefully, then he held his breath and squeezed the trigger gently—and broke the target’s back leg.

So much for female inability to shoot: Lizzie had bested them all. Jay was full of admiration. “I don’t suppose you’d like to join my regiment?” he joked. “Not many of my men can shoot like that.”

The ponies were brought around by stable hands. Highland ponies were more surefooted than horses on rough ground. They mounted up and rode out of the courtyard.

As they jogged down the glen Henry Drome engaged Lizzie in conversation. With nothing to distract him, Jay found himself brooding over his father’s rejection again. It burned in his stomach like an ulcer. He told himself that he should have expected refusal, for his father had always favored Robert. But he had fueled his foolish optimism by reminding himself that he was not a bastard, his mother was Lady Jamisson; and he had persuaded himself that this time his father would be fair. His father was never fair, though.

He wished he were the only son. He wished Robert were dead. If there were an accident today and Robert was killed, all Jay’s troubles would be over.

He wished he had the nerve to kill him. He touched the barrel of the gun slung across his shoulder. He could make it look like an accident. With everyone shooting at the same time, it might be hard to tell who had fired the fatal ball. And even if they guessed the truth, the family would cover it up: nobody wanted scandal.

He felt a thrill of horror that he was even daydreaming about killing Robert. But I would never have had such an idea if Father had treated me fairly, he thought.

The Jamisson place was like most small Scottish estates. There was a little cultivable land in the valley bottoms, which the crofters farmed communally, using the medieval strip system and paying their rent to the laird in kind. Most of the land was forested mountains, good for nothing but hunting and fishing. A few landowners had cleared their forests and were experimenting with sheep. It was hard to get rich on a Scottish estate—unless you found coal, of course.